US journalists to go on trial in North Korea

We’ll never see them now!

According to the NY Times, North Korean authorities have completed their investigation and both journalists will face a trial.

“Our related agency has completed its investigation of the American journalists,” North Korea’s state-run news agency, KCNA, reported. “It has formally decided to put them on trial based on confirmed criminal data.” Like?

The news agency did not say specifically what charges the journalists will face. But North Korea officials said on March 31 that the reporters would be indicted on charges of “illegal entry” and perpetrating “hostile acts” against the Communist state.

Their indictment comes amid high tension between North Korea and the United States after the North launched a long-range rocket on April 5. The United States pressed the United Nations Security Council to call for tightened After Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee were arrested under circumstances that are still unclear, they appear to have become part of the political standoff between Pyongyang and Washington, analysts said, with North Korea likely to use their trial as political leverage against the United States.

North Korea has said that it would allow the reporters consular access and treat them according to international law. Amnesty International has said it doubted that they will receive a fair trial, given the North Korean judicial system’s lack of independence or transparency.

North Korea also has detained a South Korean worker in a joint industrial complex in the North for almost a month on charges of denouncing the North Korean regime.

In return, Pyongyang told the United Nations’ nuclear monitors last week to leave the country and vowed to quit six-nation talks on dismantling its nuclear weapons facilities. It threatened, too, to restart a plant that makes bomb-grade plutonium.

What are we waiting for? Our move! UN? Anyone?